"American real estate at rock bottom prices, available now to cashed-up Australian investors. Sound too good to be true? That's because, unless you're very lucky, it is. "

And so begins the story run on Australia's national broadcaster (the ABC) about the risks of investing in the US property market unprepared.

The story covers several apparent fly-by-night operators who made promises of big returns to Australian investors who handed over their cash for very little in return.

It's tragic for those involved and a salutory lesson about doing due diligence on every transaction and every individual involved in your US property purchase.

However, we've noticed these stories are pretty common in the Australian media which tends to heavily spruik investment in the overheated Australian property market as that's a key source of classified advertising revenue (not in the case of the state-funded ABC though in this case).

And of course, the thousands of success stories are the ones that are going to make headlines. Rest assured, there are plenty of ways to make safe investments in the US that are relatively low risk.